Saturday, 3 May 2025

Gut feeling

Queasy: From a series of images searching for how a gut feeling could be visualised

We know the term 'gut feeling' so well that perhaps we ignore it. Our feelings lie inside us and often lodge themselves into or emanate from our stomach. A stomach that is filled with bacteria, another life form that has evolved in conjunction with ourselves and that is so entwined with our bodily processes that it could be thought of as both another brain and another body, our ghost or double, that is thinking for us or alongside us, as we predict what to do next in the world.

Writers are very aware of this and we often find passages in novels that suggest that our bodies contain the source of our intuitive feelings. For instance this from Vajra Chandrasekera's myth creating novel, 'The Saint of Bright Doors':

'He feels that familiar sensation in his gut: the sickening, queasy tugging that he has always thought of as his luck, his instinct, some deep sensitivity to the world that senses where he needs to go, what he needs to do, long before he can even articulate it. When it bubbles up in him, there is always something he needs to do, even if he doesn't know it yet.' (2023, p. 26)

In an earlier post, when writing about Turner and his relationship to weather I wrote, "I believe that at the core of art's image making process is the idea that the universe is made of physical stuff and that as Seth (2021, p.20) states, 'conscious states are either identical to or somehow emerge from, particular arrangements of this physical stuff'. Artists can therefore work with material processes to create metaphors by making their own arrangements of physical stuff (paint, drawing materials, clay, stone, found objects etc.). These arrangements or physical conglomerations are like in someway, those other particular arrangements of physical stuff that are not art, those organisations of materials that we call life experience. By making these arrangements, (art) we help ourselves come to terms with the chaos of the arrangements of materials we experience as 'life'.

So yes physical stuff moved around in similar ways to other physical stuff. Echoes of larger forces perhaps? Our microbiome is spread throughout our body, and concentrated differently in the various areas that bacteria and other organisms, such as fungi, collect. It is also important to remember that microorganisms form the bedrock on which every ecosystem on Earth is founded. Without them we would have no air to breath or food to eat; without them we would not even be able to digest food, even if it became available. At a basic level, they are linked to the atoms and molecules that make up the non-animate physical world, sitting between them and 'life', holding myriads of conversations between animate and non-animate worlds through chemical and electrical exchanges. Everything is connected and the trillions of entities that live within us, connect us together, and link us to the rest of the world, just as surely as gravity holds together the mass of substances that we call the Earth, and in its own small way, how the various blobs and marks that make up or compose a drawing, come together.

So can I fuse these various bits of awareness with the visual metaphors I use in the images I make? Towards what purpose? If we can begin to see our bodies as feeling tones, as thinking entities that operate as material texts, then perhaps we can begin to see how inextricably linked we are into the Earth's bio-systems and as one steps back and looks at the situation from a cosmic distance, how we are linked in to the universe itself. Portraits of humans could be more like star systems or molecular level clusters seen via electron microscopes, all linked by interwoven energies be they electromagnetic, nuclear or gravitational.  

Stomach ache linked to constipation

The Milky Way

Granite seen under a microscope

Self portrait as a material text

References:

Chandrasekera, V. (2023) The Saint of Bright Doors Oxford: Solaris

Gershon, M. D., & Margolis, K. G. (2021). The gut, its microbiome, and the brain: connections and communications. The Journal of clinical investigation131(18), e143768. https://doi.org/10.1172/JCI143768

Seth, A., (2021) Being you: A new science of consciousness. London: Penguin.

See also:

Up close and far away: The macro and the micro
Drawing texture
Drawing and quantum theory
Powers of 10
Macro and micro: Embodied networks

Wednesday, 30 April 2025

Body Auras

 
“General Perspective View of the Human Aura.” Auguste Jean Baptiste Marques (1896)

My ongoing research into the visualisation of interoception has on several occasions led me to consider the historical role of 'the aura' in the visual realisation of the body's invisible forces. The aura or as Walter John Kilner termed it 'the Human Atmosphere' in his book of the same name, is associated with an idea of energy fields that move through the body. It is an idea that has been used many times and across several cultures, and I suspect it will come into its own again, once we begin to have a clearer idea of how the quantum world interfaces with what we think of as 'normal' space time reality.

The nearest phenomenological experience I suspect I ever encounter in relation to auras is when I get a migraine. An initial shift at the edge of my vision begins to splinter into the colours of the spectrum, and then gradually the world I look at begins to bend and fragment, the experience being not unlike looking at the world through a cut glass vase. I sense that if I could see myself from outside my body, my head would be surrounded with a faceted glow. I have had these migraines for many years and when I get them I just accept them and watch. They are a useful reminder of how much the world is a construction of my perceptual system and I try to hold on to the sensation of moving through what becomes a very fragmented world, even though I am intellectually aware that nothing outside of myself has actually changed.


I have made my experiences of migraines in both clay and in two dimensions.

Sol Invictus: Roman

I found this image of a Roman Sol Invictus recently and I felt that perhaps its maker had also experienced migraines. I liked the fact that the eyes were shut, suggesting a concentration on internal energies, that were then escaping through the head. A glow around the head is a visual idea that in religion is usually called a halo and I think that because of the prevalence of so many halo type glows that emerge from Holy Ghosts, Jesus and the Saints, that a heavily Christianised society such as that in 19th Century Britain, would have been well prepared for an idea of invisible auras, so it is no surprise to see texts such as '
The Chakras' by Leadbeater, whereby he illustrates chakra forms as if they are circular auras, or 'Man and His Bodies' by Annie Besant, which has a chapter on 'the human aura'.

The crown chakra: Leadbeater

Some neurophysiologists have though apparently suggested that the ability to see a glowing aura surrounding a person is the product of synesthesia. Aura, or emotionally mediated synaesthesia is described by people with that particular synesthesia, as a condition whereby they see projected around other people colours, which depend on some sort of emotional condition that belongs to the perceiver. This condition can also be seen in relation to objects that people have an emotional relationship with. The important issue here is that the 'aura' is therefore a projection that is dependent on the perceiver. Could it be therefore, that it was a person with emotionally mediated synaesthesia, that first came up with the idea of an aura?

Emotionally mediated synaesthesia aura

Ramachandran, Miller, Livingstone and Brang (2012) have investigated this issue and have attempted to give scientific credibility to what has often been regarded as folklore. They based their paper on a 23-year-old man diagnosed with Asperger's, who began to consistently experience colours around individuals from the age of 10. His colours were based on identity and emotional connection. They also investigated the subject's claim that emotions evoked highly specific colours, allowing him, despite his Asperger's, to introspect on emotions and recognise them in others. It was this aspect that particularly interested myself, as it appeared to relate to my interest in how emotion could be visualised.

Ramachandran, Miller, Livingstone and Brang: A colour taxonomy of emotions

Ramachandran, Miller, Livingstone and Brang (2012), have developed a diagram to explain their subject's taxonomy of emotions. They had noticed that the subject’s colour for pride was a shade of blue and the colour for aggression was pinkish–red. As the colour for arrogance was purple, they presumed this was due to an understanding of a mixing of blue and red (pigments, not light), the combination of pride and aggression in what could be called an emotion–space being arrogance. This observation, if further verified would indicate that the subject’s colour associations are not random and are the results of a taxonomy of emotions subjectively understood by the subject. Ramachandran, Miller, Livingstone and Brang went on to map several of the subject’s emotion–colour associations in a colour space, which resulted in a colour taxonomy of emotions; which reminded me of Robert Plutchik's wheel of emotions and so I set out to compare the two.
Robert Plutchik: Wheel of emotions 


There were only five words that were the same, (see linked in red) and of these there was not enough congruity to establish anything meaningful. For instance for the person with emotionally mediated synaesthesia, joy is red and for Plutchik it is yellow. Disgust for one is sort of orange and for the other purple. Love sits between green and yellow for Plutchik but is red/purple for the synesthete and fear is green for one and red for the other. It was interesting though to see how when people pick emotive words how hard it is to hit on the same words. Another possibility was I suppose to cluster the words, putting nervousness for example next to apprehension, at least they were both in green.
I had earlier played around with Plutchik's idea and had placed colours around his cone of emotions, as I did like the fact that different saturations and tonalities could be linked to degrees of emotional intensity.
Plutchik's cone of emotions: Anger, annoyance and rage

The idea of colour intensity and an aura type effect has often been used in the past when artists were having to find ways of visualising a closeness to divinity. In Medieval art full-figure auras, are called aureoles or mandorlas if more almond shaped. They are used to indicate a divine nature or at times figures under divine protection. Mandorla were often painted in several concentric patterns of colour that grew darker as they came close to the centre. This was a reflection of the church's use of apophatic theology, whereby as holiness increases, there is no way to depict its brightness, except by darkness.

Christ within a green mandorla 

The aura type image we associate with Christianity is something that is found in earlier art forms as well as other religions, also to signify divine presence.

The mandorla is made from two overlapping circles

Circles are perfect forms and two perfections overlapping create the almond shape of the mandorla. Known as the vesica piscis, (bladder of a fish), this shape is a type of 'lens'. which is itself a mathematical shape formed by the intersection of two disks with the same radius, intersecting in such a way that the centre of each disk lies on the perimeter of the other.

Whilst religious iconography picked up on the visual power of aura type images to represent invisible mystic or divine powers, our bodies can also be thought to hold within them other types of invisible energies; energies that could perhaps be visualised in similar ways. For instance, the heart's rhythmic contractions create a strong magnetic field that can be detected outside the body using magnetometers and it has been observed that this field can be modulated by emotions. As someone with atrial fibrillation, I'm very aware of how when my heart speeds up in response to an emotional dilemma, my interoceptual awareness of it changes and I can 'feel/see' these energies moving through my body.

Iron filings reveal a magnetic field

The shape of a magnetic field

Magnetic field distribution (left) and corresponding body surface potential distribution (right), generated by a current dipole activated at the apex of the right ventricle, with the a magnetic catheter technique. (From Fenici, Brisinda and Meloni, 2005)

As can be seen from the image above, computer aided technology can produce maps of the body's electromagnetic fields, that allow you to compare images belonging to
electrocardiogram fields of the heart, to those of magnetocardiogram fields. In order to do this, the heart, can be thought of as an electric dipole, (the separation of the positive and negative electric charges found in any electromagnetic system that produces an electric field). This field extends in all directions, and can be measured at the body surface.


Putting electrodes at two different points which each have a different electric field strength will produce a potential difference. If you connect electrodes to two different points at the body surface, you should be able to measure the potential difference generated by the cardiac electric field, and then plot its changes over time. This is how the electrocardiogram works.

Dermatomes of the Upper and Lower Limbs
Dermatomes are areas of skin on your body that rely on specific nerve connections to your spine. In this way, dermatomes are much like a map. Upper limb dermatomes run longitudinally, while lower limb dermatomes exhibit a more spiral pattern. This difference arises from the unique way the limbs bud and rotate during embryonic development. This supports Whitehead's idea that there is a plan that is laid down during our body's initial development and that this informs how underlying electromagnetic connections will eventually work. I'm working in a hospital spinal injuries unit at the moment and am beginning to see several people who are suffering from nerve pain. For instance, a condition called radiculopathy occurs when a spinal nerve is compressed or irritated, often due to a herniated disc. This can result in pain, sensory loss, or motor weakness in the corresponding dermatome. Electrodiagnostic testing can now be used to support the diagnosis of this condition; a diagnostic tool that is a more recent development of the technologies associated with the electrocardiogram.
The electrocardiogram was invented by Dutch physiologist Willem Einthoven in 1902 to record the heart's electrical activity. The success of this idea caused other researchers to look for similar outcomes; one of whom was Walter John Kilner (1847–1920) who was a medical electrician at St Thomas Hospital, London, in charge of electrotherapy.  In 1911 Kilner published the "Human Atmosphere" or aura, proposing not just the aura's existence and nature but also its possible use in medical diagnosis and prognosis.

Kilner's illustration of a healthy woman with "a very fine aura", from The Human Atmosphere

The human energy field he argued, was an indicator of both health and mood, thus tying together both physical and emotional health. Kilner's work often seems similar to that of other slightly later researchers in this area, who tap more into electromagnetic ideas to be able to measure the body's energy fields, but Kilner, unlike Willem Einthoven, had no understanding of electromagnetic measurement. He would I suspect have loved to have seen electrocardiography at work. He therefore attempted to invent devices to be used by the naked eye, that could enable people to observe "auric" activity. When we look back on his work, we can of course see how he was able to fool himself by setting out to make something that enabled him to 'see' what he strongly believed in. We all know how much an expectation can influence what we see and I suspect sadly, he was more susceptible than most to the expectation effect.

It is not so much whether or not there can be any scientific proof of auras, what I'm looking for is how we are predisposed to think visually about them and what they represent. In my work looking at the visualisation of interoception, what I often find myself doing is sitting with someone whilst they describe to me an inner feeling, be this pain, emotion or another sensation and the ground out of which the conversation emerges, must not be that dissimilar to the landscape out of which thinkers such as Kilner emerged. I listened recently to a podcast devoted to synaesthesia and one of the people talking about their experiences had emotionally mediated synaesthesia, which meant that she saw colours surrounding people and these colours changed, often due to her emotional connection with the person seen. As she went on to describe, what was for her an everyday experience, I began thinking about how perhaps it was those of us who literally see differently, that help us as a species come to see or visualise those things that most people cant see, such as emotions. For instance we mainly have a three colour visualisation system called trichromacy, but evidence exists that there are people who have four distinct colour perception channels or tetrachromacy. Apparently it’s more common in women than in men and it has been suggested that nearly 12 percent of women may have this fourth colour perception channel. Is this why it is often suggested that women are more 'psychic' than men? 

However, back to Kilner. He created what came to be called 'Kilner screens'; which were treated with variously coloured liquid dyes. These screens it was argued allowed us to see outside the visual light spectrum, and what could be seen were the result of seeing 'N-rays'. 'X-rays' immediately come to mind here. In his book we read that his screen allows us to perceive various auric formations, such as the 'Etheric Double', the 'Inner Aura' and the 'Outer Aura', which were formations that extended several inches from patients' naked bodies. His screens were more popularly known as Kilner goggles and are in my mind very closely associated with 'x-ray specs'.
The aura seen via Kilner goggles

In reality of course x-ray specs merely create an optical illusion; no real X-rays are involved, but once again we have a device to create images of the body that many were willing to think, might  offer an alternative vision. 

A hand seen using x-ray specs


Kilner goggles are still being produced, but unlike x-ray specs which you can buy for £4 to £5 they cost £45 to £75 and come with lots of convincing blurb. I looked up the words put in to aid search engines to find the aura glasses above, they were, Dicyanin, Style, Ghost, Hunting, Paranormal, Tool, Detector, Metaphysical, Chakras, Energy, Prana, Occult, Wicca, Crystal, Meditation, Weird, Psychic, Reiki, Healing, Glasses, EVP, Emf, Kirlian, Orgone. Interestingly there seems to be a conspiracy theory surrounding the banning of the chemical dicyanin and manufacturers of these goggles are always keen to state that they use a synthetic replacement chemical. All fascinating stuff that points to a real want to believe in something. You can probably do it yourself without any special equipment. Just put your hand against a white wall and state at it for a while, gradually a 'halo' will begin to emerge around the fingers. This 'halo' will depend on the actual colours in your hand, for instance if your hand is pinkish, you will begin to see colours that are optical opposites, greenish/blueish. This is colour fatigue and as most of the adverts for the aura goggles suggest you stare at the edges of bodies for some time until the aura appears, I think it is this phenomena that has triggered the idea of the aura.

Stare at this green head for 5 minutes (the time you are asked to stare at a body to see an aura)

There is an 'auratic' history and we use a certain set of words, including in particular, rays, waves and fields when talking about invisible energy or radiation. Such as magnetic fields, radio waves, microwaves, X-rays, and gamma rays. The idea of 'x-rays' is still a powerful concept, one that in particular shows how invisible rays can penetrate solid forms and reveal 'what lies beneath'. 
An x-ray that suggests a skin like aura surrounding the bones

Röntgen discovered x-rays in 1895, and in visualisations of invisible rays they have remained the 'mystic master' of ray type form ever since. The other related form is the field, such as an electric field. 

An electric field

Various researchers have then used these forms to develop concepts about how invisible energies lie beneath surface appearances. For instance Harold Saxton Burr, a researcher into bio-electrics, contended that the electro-dynamic fields of all living things, mould and control each organism's development, health, and mood. He named these L-Fields and used them to explain cellular differentiation and how and why living organisms were able to retain the forms that they do. Burr compared his L-field idea to the entelechy of Hans Driech and the morphogenetic fields proposed by Hans Spemann and Paul Weiss.

However there are far more prosaic forms of invisible energies passing through the body.

A young man holding his hand to his heart, emanating insensible perspiration.” Colour stipple engraving by J. Pass, after Ebenezer Sibly (1794)

The engraving above is really about sweat. The "insensible perspiration that issues from the pores of the body, which can only be discerned by means of a lens and that ascends through the bed-clothes like a mist when we are asleep", is I'm pretty sure, sweat. But we are all very aware of what happens when we have a fever and it is another invisible something passing through the body that we need to reckon with. 

Magnification of sweat glands

The more I have worked with interoceptual feelings, the more I realise emotions, physical pain, bodily functions, intuitions, illnesses, memories and a host of other things are all mixed up and tied together by the fact they all inhabit the same very complicated physical body. It is no surprise then to find that the various thinkers who were looking at auras, had tried to fit in to their theories other ideas that were floating around at the time. For instance in his book 'The Human Aura', Auguste Marques connects the concept of 'thought forms' to the aura and he suggests that images and colours penetrate the aura in response to emotional changes in the mind of the person who's aura we are studying. These thought forms are illustrated in his book and for Marques have very particular meanings. 

From: The Human Aura: Thought Forms

Marques uses Blavatsky's definition of an aura; 'A subtle invisible essence or fluid, that emanates from human and animal bodies and even things; it is a psychic effluvium, partaking of both the mind and the body, as it is the electro-vital and at the same time an electro-mental aura, called in Theosophy the akasic or magnetic.' Several types of aura are defined by him, including what he calls 'Tatwic' coloured bands. These relate to the senses, 'Akasha' to sound and in the form of dotted spheres, ellipses or egg-forms; 'Vayu', to touch, and in the form of circles; 'Tejas', to sight, and the form of triangles; 'Apas', to taste, and in the form of the crescent or lotus flower and 'Prithivi' to smell, and in the form of squares or quadrangles. These forms combine at a microscopic level to form auric bands. 


So you can imagine colour added into the mix and the fact that these are constantly changing in response to our breathing patterns. I am of course drawn to compare these images with magnetic and electric fields and so I took a sample line and put it through a few transformations in order to arrive at an auratic form.

Head with Tatwic auratic form

One way of describing a human being is that it is an electrodynamic organism attuned to the cosmos. This statement represents the fact that we are at a deep level organised by electric and electromagnetic fields. Alfred North Whitehead stated that, "an electron within a living body is different from an electron outside it, by reason of the plan of the body." This body plan he maintained represented both mental and physical attributes of a unified experience and that it was able to modify the motion of subatomic particles within it. Some years later the physiologist Harold Saxton Burr wrote The Blueprint for Immortality first published in 1972, which on its cover blurb stated, “This is a breakthrough book – the first comprehensive account ever published of one of the most important scientific discoveries of this century. It reveals that all living things – from men to mice, from trees to seeds – are moulded and controlled by ‘electrodynamic fields’, which can be measured and mapped with standard modern volt-meters. It goes on the state, “Since measurements of L-field voltages can reveal physical and mental conditions, doctors will be able to use them to diagnose illnesses before the usual symptoms develop and so will have a better chance of successful treatment.” An almost exact description of how Kilner's work was supposed to be used and also my thoughts when thinking about what interoceptual images might be useful for.

Pain felt when in a wheelchair

Pain relieved using a centrally jointed bed

Once again an idea seems impelled into being by a psychological need and I sense that Burr's book might be as much to do with art as science. However time to end another ramble, especially as I have just discovered after writing most of this post that there already exists a book, 'Picturing Aura' by Jeremy Stolow, that seems to cover most of the ground I've been thinking about. 

References

Fenici, R., Brisinda, D. and Meloni, A.M., (2005) Clinical application of magnetocardiography. Expert review of molecular diagnostics5(3), pp.291-313.

Kilner, W.J., (1911) The Human atmosphere, or, The aura made visible by the aid of chemical screens. Rebman Company. Available at: https://wellcomecollection.org/works/t94es3zc/items

Ramachandran, V.S., Miller, L., Livingstone, M.S. and Brang, D., (2012) Colored halos around faces and emotion-evoked colors: a new form of synesthesiaNeurocase18(4), pp.352-358.

Renbourn, E.T., (1960) The natural history of insensible perspiration: a forgotten doctrine of health and diseaseMedical History4(2), pp.135-152.

Stolow, J. (2025) Picturing Aura London: MIT Press

See also:


Drawing the corona virus

Diagrams: Visualising the invisible

Visualising energy flow

Interoceptual textures and surface flow

Para-scientific visions and Rayonism

The iconography of the invisible

Lines as symbols of invisible forces

Measuring emotions and colour

Thursday, 24 April 2025

The poetry of the body

Gaston Bachelard's 'The Poetry of Space' was at one time an essential text to read. It gave artists a rationale that they could use to value the poetic (i.e. non scientific) way that they shaped lived experiences and his text demonstrated how emotional responses to spaces like attics, cellars or even drawers, could be communicated through a more poetic understanding.  

What I'm looking for is a companion volume, 'The Poetry of the Body'. Something that like a dérive, eventually finds purpose in wondering about. My unsettled mind, as it flitters around and alights on stuff and then dips into things, never quite settles. I cant seem to drill down and deeply focus on one thing or another, each of my posts skips around an idea, but never quite settles down and I'm looking for some sort of confirmation that this is ok, this is normal.

I was watching a butterfly in the garden yesterday. It seemed to be randomly drifting around, following the shifting air currents as a light breeze passed through the hedge. Then it settled on an old stuffed textile. The cloth was now a pale yellow, a ghost of its former self, but it  offered a moment of warmth to the butterfly, that then spread out its brown spotted wings as a gift to the world. As it bathed in the sun, the surface it had happened upon became something else, a spot for sunbathing. It was a sunbathing spot that hosted a sunbathing moment, like all the billions of moments that butterflies of this sort had had in their pasts and futures. A moment that I now thought was what that old thrown out stuffed cloth had been made for. It was already degrading, it had the grime of nature already woven into its texture, touches of green were now growing through its tight matrix of fibres and this moment, was perhaps the moment of its transformation, woven back into the matrix it had emerged from. 

The speckled wood

 A moment of inconsequence, but it felt more real to me than the many systems of thinking and categories of connections that I had been wrestling with over the last few years. 

I sitt in a plastic red chair, writing about something I felt yesterday. As I lean forward to write, I'm aware my shirt lifts away from my lower back and I feel the cold air that this lets move across my skin. The chair exerts pressure to my upper thighs and I can rock slightly from one side to the other to make myself more aware of this. I cough occasionally, I am getting over a nasty viral infection that I have had to struggle against over the last two weeks. I wonder how many more I will succumb to in the future, before one takes a hold that I cant shift. I have an itch that I cant really get at as it sits between my shoulder blades, but I don't mind, it helps make me aware of that part of my body and it guides me to an ache that sits across the top of my shoulders. My attention, like that of the butterfly's, flits around and then I forget these body sensations because something else takes my attention. The flow of awareness, the impact of constantly occurring qualia on my perceptual screen, is like a mist that I walk through and as things appear to solidify themselves as they emerge out of this mist, I tend to mostly let them fade back again, unless it feels as if they hold some sort of importance. 

For a brief moment this morning I saw something come into focus as I was looking at the work of Flora Joan, who is an acupuncturist and artist. She is part of 'The Nature of the Points' a group based in Amsterdam who have been thinking and acting within a territory that straddles visualisation and healing.

Tongue and diagnostics: Flora Joan

Tongue reflexology

The tongue can be used as a diagnostic tool and it can be used to assess the flow of Qi (energy) in the body. I was interested in Flora Joan's illustration because she was bringing together elements from both inside and outside traditional Chinese medicine, in particular her own focus on a return to nature. Looking at the range of activities that take place under the umbrella of 'The Nature of the Points', also helped me develop my own thoughts on how useful my work on the visualisation of interoception was and I could see a clear link between the work they do and what I'm attempting. 


Visualisations of subjective models of the body's interior

I have cardiac arrhythmia and certain medical and music scholars have speculated that Beethoven may also have had the same condition. In his musical scores he sometime uses asymmetrical rhythmical patterns and changes in tempo, that could possibly mirror the effects of an irregular heartbeat. This aspect of his work has also been linked to a correlation between the known times when it is argued he would have experienced stress or a very high emotional connection with what he was engaging with. It is impossible to prove this of course, but it is another of those possibilities or what ifs, that help me frame up what I'm thinking about in relation to emotion and its communication. 

An invisible hand about to close on the chest

Sometimes I dream about my inner body being squeezed and then realise its my heart trying to tell me something. Out of dreams, sometimes emerge images that sit between the conscious and the unconscious mind, they can be an alternative poetry of the body. 

I think of Beethoven is a giant of poetry, particularly in the way his music's expressive power and ability to evoke emotions, goes right down to my body's core. I 'feel' his emotional intensity, as a type of 'sound poetry', something that I intuitively feel ought to be possible as 'visual poetry' as well. 

The externalisation of an idea of a headache

I have attempted to visualise inner sensations in a variety of ways and after running several workshops with people looking at how others can visualise interoceptual experiences, am now very aware of the necessary time it takes for people to confront the difficulties that face them when attempting to learn a new or developing language. Often you need to show a 
cliché in order to open a pathway towards an alternative.

Headache

Sometimes I have to rely on existing conventions and deal with clichés, as in the image of a headache I came up with above. This was an image arrived at by consensus but which I now feel could go on the side of a packet of Anadin. Which in itself might be a good thing, but I have never thought of my work as graphic design for pharmaceutical companies. 


An image of sinusitis intuitively feels to me that it is much more interesting.

Headache: Sinusitis

This is a more personalised image, one made as a consequence of a conversation, so it is an actual 'portrait' of two people's interoceptual experience, rather than a generic visual idea. Perhaps this is where the value of the work lies and that by tapping into individual experiences and trying to make them visible; am I finally making some sort of embodied visual poetry?

See also:

Wednesday, 16 April 2025

The Influence of the Tarot

Votive cards

I have had made several decks of cards based both on my personal image bank and in response to collaborative conversations with other people, and in the back of my mind when I have done so, I had images of the tarot card decks that I have come across at various times in my life. In particular, I was when a young man, captivated by the writing of Italo Calvino and his novel 'The Castle of Crossed Destinies', whereby the Tarot embeds itself into life. As the novel unfolds we see how meaning is created by symbolic interpretation. This approach to story telling triggered for myself a lifelong awareness of possible symbolic meanings that might be found in the images that at various times have welled up from my sub-conscious. Calvino also stimulated a life long interest in Jung and his idea of archetypes. 

Calvino's story is centred on a meeting of travellers who are inexplicably unable to speak after passing through a forest. The characters in the novel can only tell of their adventures using tarot cards, the narrator acting as a tarot card 'reader'. By juxtaposing word and image Calvino asks questions as to what drives the stories we inhabit. The author–narrator–character–reader relationship is constantly questioned and we are drawn into the story both as a reader and as an author. 

The Tarot as laid out by Calvino

In recognition of the importance of the Tarot in relation to a more mystical reading of recent art history, the Warburg Institute has put on an exhibition of tarot cards; 'Tarot - Origins & Afterlives', and it is on until 30th April. 

The Tarot, Mixed media by J.B. Alliette (Etteilla). c1788

I have always been interested in how narratives can be developed by sequencing, and I have sometimes used the tarot card idea as a way to make up storyboards. In our western society we tend to read text from left to right, and from top to bottom, so we lay out tarot cards the same way. But tarot readings laid out in this way have a far more interesting narrative consequence, because once the cards have been laid out, new readings can then be undertaken, dependent upon the way patterns can be found. Diagonal, vertical and horizontal readings can be undertaken, or clusters of formal relationships, such as rectangles of four or the cards that form a border around all the others, or every other card. Geometry and sequence is used to carry threads of ideas. The visual nature of the tarot breaks the linear conventions associated with a written story and questions whether or not a narrative always has to have a beginning, middle and an end. 

I have returned to the card deck as a generator of narrative connections several times, each time however I have tried to set up a slightly different approach. 

The Western World was my first attempt to develop the idea. I came up with 50 images and each one had a poetic text written to accompany it which was to go on the back of each card. You can get the idea by clicking on the Western World link. I was at the time trying to respond to the Gulf War and the then US president George Bush had been getting 'wanted' posters made of the main villains such as Saddam Hussein. It struck me that he was probably someone who in his youth had like myself played at 'Cowboys and Indians'. Perhaps, I thought, this was a myth now inhabiting his head, which was shaping decisions being made by what was then, the most powerful man in the world. By numbering the cards I gave them an initial sequential narrative, but as you laid them out, I was hoping new stories might be found as someone began to find patterns and as they did they could turn the cards over to read the poems underneath. 


Eventually I put the cards together in both a poster and book formats, thus freezing the narrative into a particular order. 

Two cards from the Western World series: 46 and 47

Back of card 46

I have since persisted in making other attempts to work in this area. The first set to be printed as cards, and with a specially designed box was a group of 52 'story cards'. These were cards with images on them that I was at the time using to create narratives. 


Story cards

This was a simple idea and it seemed to go down well, as people bought quite a few sets and I also used them to create mini exhibitions. They were even used as part of my role at the College of Art, other staff being encouraged to shuffle them and lay out cards in order for narratives to be triggered. These cards were the same size as playing cards and then a couple of years later I decided to make a set that were much more like Taro cards. This new set, again of 52, was the same size as a traditional Taro deck and had suits. 






The card backs were simply white 0s on black and the edges had permutations of - marks set into them, which meant that when you laid them out after shuffling, that certain visual configurations were suggested if you attempted to connect the - marks. Immediately users began to use these marks as a weighting system, so the branching vein/tree image, with 6 - marks, would be read as of highest value. People had to decide for themselves what each of the suits meant and I was always fascinated as to what they came up with. You can still access these cards via my website. I haven't updated it for several years but it still operates. See.

Then whilst I was working with votives I was commissioned to design a set of cards that would help older men begin to open up about their various illnesses. These were designed, printed and then distributed to various men's community centres across Leeds and after an initially quite good response, the project was shelved because of covid. 

Votive cards as they appear on the website

You can still shuffle the cards if you go to the website and I have several packs left, people occasionally asking me for a pack when they come across the project, which is archived here

A couple of years ago I was asked to join in a collaborative project that was designed to celebrate the 56 Group, a Welsh based artists' organisation, that I had first come across when I was a student in Newport. I was paired with the artist Tiff Oben and we came up with the idea of a set of tea cards. We would send  texts as catalysts to each other and we used them to develop 25 cards each, for a final set of 50. I think it was Tiff that came up with the idea, as she had a relative that had a set of old tea cards framed on a wall. I was of course very happy to develop another card set, as well as to work in collaboration, which I always find forces me to be inventive. I was at the same time beginning to work on images driven by my interest in interoception, so the two projects began to overlap and I saw Tiff's prompts as being similar to the discussions held by participants in my interoception workshops. 

For instance, at one point Tiff sent this text, 'Everyday we walk over the monuments of what came before. Some we see. Others are so deeply buried we barely have an inkling of them. But all make us who we are'. I then in response came up with the foot that did the walking. My own text to accompany the image, then became a reflection of the pain I was often getting in my feet due to plantar fasciitis. I then went back and reworked the foot image in response to what I had written.
Halting Implosion: A set of 50 cards (These are my 25)

There are so many artists that have been influenced by the tarot, that it's impossible to look in any depth at the issue within the narrow confines of a blog post, suffice it to say that Surrealist artists were deeply influenced by the possibilities the tarot opened out. When she was heading up the gallery at Leeds College of Art, and what is now Leeds Arts University, the curator Dr Catriona McAra often focused her attention on women Surrealists such as Leonora Carrington. It was for myself so refreshin
g to see the work of, at the time, very underestimated Surrealists. Then at the 59th Venice Biennale, in 2022, "The Milk of Dreams, there was an exhibition showcasing many of the women Catriona had already brought to my attention, a reminder that artists might fade out of sight, but at some point they come back into focus, when society is ready for them. So perhaps I'll leave this post with two images by one of Carrington's friends Remedios Varo, who was herself deeply influenced by the tarot, as well as some of Carrington's own tarot card designs.

Remedios Varo

Remedios Varo
The Devil: Leonora Carrington

The world: Leonora Carrington

Death: Leonora Carrington

See also: 

The continuing influence of Surrealism 

Fuseli and modern women

Drawing from the old masters

Languages of paper and cardboard

A report from the 'Milk of Dreams'